In 2019, the NEA research office published Living Traditions, an analysis of the agency’s Folk & Traditional Arts grants portfolio. The report has launched a major capacity-building initiative for the folk arts field as a discrete arts subsector, which, in many U.S. regions, remains grossly under-funded. The Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA), a nonprofit affiliated with the … [Read more...] about Strength in Numbers: Validating Infrastructure Needs for the Folk Arts Subsector
Quick Study: The Arts and Juvenile Justice
In this episode, we consider arts programming in juvenile justice settings, as well as a study of the arts’ potential to reduce antisocial or criminal behavior among youth in the general population. A transcript is available here. … [Read more...] about Quick Study: The Arts and Juvenile Justice
Hypothesis: Arts Education Access Is a Human Rights Issue
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. - Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations General Assembly, 1948) Across centuries, individuals from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds have employed creativity, imagination, … [Read more...] about Hypothesis: Arts Education Access Is a Human Rights Issue
Quick Study: The Arts in Social Prescribing
In this episode, we discuss the phenomenon of social prescribing of the arts, its traction in the UK, and growing interest among arts/health researchers and practitioners. A transcript of this podcast is available at the NEA website. … [Read more...] about Quick Study: The Arts in Social Prescribing
Taking a Page from Baldwin: Book-Reading as a Violence Coping and Prevention Strategy
In 1963, James Baldwin told a LIFE magazine reporter: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected to me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open … [Read more...] about Taking a Page from Baldwin: Book-Reading as a Violence Coping and Prevention Strategy